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Re-thinking Science: Knowledge
and the Public in
an Age of Uncertainty
by Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott
& Michael Gibbons
Polity Press: 2001. 278 pp. £50 (hbk),
£14.99 (pbk)
Jean-Jacques Salomon
how climate change is a real threat to the general culture and a precise knowledge of
planet and mankind. the field, ends with 17 points to be debated
In the continuing battle between histori- for the agora, or “how to live with mode-2
ans and sociologists of science, what is at society”. It should stimulate the interest not
stake is the issue of the epistemological, or only of scientists or specialists in science
knowledge-based, foundations of science. In studies, but also of social scientists, intellec-
this regard, the authors make one of their tuals and the lay public.
most radical statements: “The epistemologi- One issue the authors choose not to
cal core is either empty — or, alternatively develop is the influence of the scientific–
and perhaps more accurately, crowded with military–industrial complex in industrial-
other epistemologies.” The controversy may ized countries, as if it had no impact on the
not disappear, but the authors make their agora itself. It seems to me, however, that
point when they give examples — such as the scientists involved in defence research,
Japan and the developing countries — of who are acting both as “warriors” and as
where Western science, in order to function, “victims” — as the physicist Freeman Dyson
has to associate with and come to terms with described himself — are the best illustration
cultural heritages that define another kind of of how mode 2 combines professional
epistemological approach. behaviour, the excitement of research,
Equally important will be the question of patriotic commitment, corruption, but
how reliable is the knowledge produced under also scruples, ethical concerns and even
mode 2, which is so radically different from attention to public anxiety and criticism.
the peer system of the closely knit community But this does not prevent the book from
of mode 1. In Real Science: What it is and What being a splendid vision of a probable future
it Means (Cambridge University Press, 2000), world, in which science and society will
John Ziman considers that the traditional increasingly overlap and be exposed to the
academic ethos, in particular the commit- growing expertise and contesting forces of
ment to disinterestedness, is jeopardized, if the agora. ■ do with everyday life. In The Evolution
not alienated, by the closer links between Jean-Jacques Salomon is honorary Professor of Explosion, Stephen Palumbi, a biologist at
industry and academia. Socio-economic Technology and Society at the Conservatoire Harvard University, tries to dispel this view,
power, he and others claim, threatens to be the National des Arts et Métiers, 2 rue Conté, using Darwin’s own strategy of appealing to
final authority. I would hardly disagree on this 75003 Paris, France. the reader’s experience and hoping that
point. Suffice to mention the uneasy relations familiarity breeds consent.
between the commercial genome-sequencing Palumbi concentrates on cases in which
company Celera and the international public humans have produced rapid evolution in
consortium for the Human Genome Project,
which are all about patents and the prospects The case of the other species by changing their environ-
ments: his examples include the evolution of
for new start-up companies in genetics and
involve intervention by bankers, politicians missing carpaccio antibiotic resistance in bacteria, herbicide
resistance in plants, pesticide resistance in
and governments. The Evolution Explosion: How insects, and changes in the growth rate of fish
Yet Nowotny and her colleagues convinc- Humans Cause Rapid caused by overfishing. Remarkably, many
ingly address such criticism: after all, reliable Evolutionary Change people familiar with these phenomena have
knowledge has always been reliable only by Stephen R. Palumbi failed to see that they demonstrate evolution
within limits, and the shift away from weakly W. W. Norton: 2001. 277 pp. $24.95 driven by selection. There is, for example, a
contextualized to strongly contextualized Jerry A. Coyne public misconception that ‘drug resistance’
knowledge — for instance, from theoretical involves not evolutionary change in patho-
physics to bioengineering — does not elimi- Many students open The Origin of Species genic bacteria, but some process whereby a
nate the need for reliability. On the contrary, expecting intellectual fireworks, but are person becomes acclimated to antibiotics.
it adds robustness, for research, while receiv- disappointed to find a soporific discussion Palumbi writes enthusiastically and
ing input from society, is still being tested, of sheep and pigeons. Yet Darwin’s tedious clearly, and his stories are based on extensive
verified and validated. The authors intro- opening chapter on artificial selection was a research documented in an appendix. His
duce a new (but old) notion: they propose stroke of rhetorical genius: by recounting chapter on AIDS is particularly useful,
that the contextualization of knowledge is the familiar triumphs of animal and plant describing in detail how HIV evolves to avoid
taking place in a public arena that they call breeders, he paved the way for his infinitely the double depredations of our immune sys-
the ‘agora’ — the public market-place of more heretical evolutionary ideas. (This tem and new generations of antiviral drugs.
classical Greece. To Nowotny et al., this is a strategy nearly misfired: one of the publ- Elsewhere, we learn that antibiotic resistance
place where social knowledge and social isher’s readers, noting that “everybody is in pathogenic bacteria has been caused both
participation constrain scientists to recon- interested in pigeons”, recommended that by the overprescription of drugs (leading, for
struct their authority, to understand and Darwin drop the messy stuff about evolution example, to the resurgence of drug-resistant
communicate better how science is per- and concentrate instead on birds.) tuberculosis) and by the use of antibiotics
ceived and to determine how the public trust Although darwinism is now firmly estab- that increase growth rates in farm animals
in science — beyond market and political lished in scientific and intellectual life, it is (producing chickens harbouring dangerous,
pressures — can be maintained. far from entrenched in the public conscious- drug-resistant salmonellae and explaining
To these authors, the rethinking of ness. This is due partly to the prevalence of the absence of carpaccio di pollo in Italian
science is not “science re-thought”, but a creationism, but also to the notion — fami- restaurants).
new conception — indeed, a new era — of liar to anyone who teaches premedical Sadly, our understanding of these evolu-
research practice, image and values. This students — that evolution has nothing to tionary responses seems to have contributed
586 © 2001 Macmillan Magazines Ltd NATURE | VOL 412 | 9 AUGUST 2001 | www.nature.com